Why Do I Bother?
by The Insane Fox
Summary: Lately life hadn't been going the way Roxas had planned.  So the one night he decides to have a little fun, a mysterious redhead enters his life and throws and makes an even bigger mess of things.


**A/N:** So this is rather embarrassing that it took me 7 months to the day to get a new story published (erp, nevermind, 7 months plus a day now that I look at my clock). Life has had a tendency to get in the way as of late. I transferred to a new college, moved 13 hours away from home, and am just getting settled into my new routine/life down here. Actually, this story is almost autobiographical in that sense in which this is sort of what my life has been the past 8 months up until I finally went back to college after taking a semester off. (Minus a hot guy like Axel to make it all better). So anywho, my word of advice to all you youngins who may or may not have had your first experience(s) with college-aged parties: DO NOT DRINK THE JUNGLE JUICE (or hooch as I'm learning the locals call it down here in my new school). Seriously. That stuff is dangerous and the bathtub thing was something I actually saw at a party once. (I've also seen it made it even worse places, but I'll spare you the details of those since I'm sure the majority of you value your lunch).

This is also self-edited as I have no beta reader, so be kind on your critiques please ^^'

Also, for those of you who may (or most likely not) care, I have a tumblr for updates regarding my writing (i.e., life's latest way to be a bitch and not let me write). The URL is: theinsanefox . tumblr . com (take out the spaces since ffnet hates URLs)

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><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

Roxas should have known how bad his day was going to be. More specifically, he knew better than to answer his phone when his boss called him on his day off. Normally he would have hit the ignore button and let it go to voicemail before proceeding to pretend he never got the message, but Aerith just so happened to catch him in a half-asleep state that left his brain in a foggy haze. Before he knew it, he was being given the whole "Please come in before I kill Merlin, he's driving the customers up a wall with his insane ramblings and if you please do this I'll buy you lunch today" spiel and, being the total pussy he was with so little backbone he was pretty sure you could coil him up like a garden hose, Roxas suddenly found himself standing behind the register at the lawn and garden center he worked at. On his day off.

Life was looking pretty crappy for the petite blonde at this moment in time as he dealt with yet another pissy customer that had some complaint about how the plant they bought was defective (when the reality of course was that said customer was just too fucking stupid to remember to water the plant, so of course it died), when he heard a loud crash followed by a string of shouts and curses coming from the back of the store. With a dazzling, completely fake smile, Roxas excused himself from the customer before calling to Merlin to take over and all but bolted to the back loading dock to check on the chaos.

The blonde found his best friend and coworker Hayner hopping around on one foot, letting out a stream of cusses Roxas hadn't even known existed until then. Raising an eyebrow at his friend, Roxas patiently waited for Hayner to finish his bitching before finally asking, "Everything ok, man?"

"Fucking peachy," the taller of the two growled. "Who would've thought fertilizer weighs so fucking much?"

"Language, Hayner!" Aerith's cheery voice chided as she walked into the loading dock. "Honestly, the customers can hear you from back here!"

Hayner ducked his head and mumbled an apology. Satisfied, Aerith wandered off to go talk to customers, leaving the two boys alone. Once they were certain she was out of ear shot, Hayner finally said, "Seifer's having a party tonight. You wanna come?"

Groaning, Roxas ran a hand over his face. He hated Seifer more than just about anybody else in Twilight Town. Well, he took that back, he hated Seifer's two flunkies even more, with Fuu's general bitchiness and Rai being so dumb he made Jessica Simpson look like a certified genius. On the other hand, free booze was free booze, and he hadn't gotten drunk in a while…

"Ok , fine," Roxas said before he could second guess himself.

Grinning, Hayner clapped his best friend on the shoulder before the two headed back to their respective work stations. Roxas barely managed to slow his walk down to the point where Merlin was forced to finish ringing out the bitchy customer from before, thus giving the blonde just the slightest bit of reprieve before returning to the damned register. Unfortunately, said bitchy customer caught sight of Roxas and fixed him with a pointed glare while Merlin prattled on about naked mole rats for whatever reason before finally turning on his heel and stomping out of the store in the middle of Merlin's sentence. Completely confounded, Merlin scratched his head as he cocked it to one side before asking, "Was it something I said?"

Roxas really fucking hated this place.

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><p>As promised, Roxas found himself stepping out of the passenger side of Hayner's car later that night as the two of them began the walk to Seifer's front door. For some reason it seemed like every person in town between the ages of 16 and 30 had found their way to this party, despite the fact that maybe all of two people other than his flunkies actually liked the bastard. Apparently Roxas wasn't the only passenger on the "Fuck yeah free booze!" bandwagon.<p>

The haze of pot hit the blonde like a fucking semi-trailer by the time he reached the front porch, let alone before he opened the door to the house, and Roxas was fairly certain he was already suffering a contact high. All around him, people were either piss drunk or baked out of their damned minds, everyone in varying states of slumped over a piece of furniture or practically having sex with everyone watching. That last bit made Roxas feel like a horrible voyeur, so he scurried for the kitchen where he was fairly confident he'd find the booze.

"ROXASSSS!"

Cringing at the sound of his name being screamed, Roxas turned in time to see a blur of brunette as he was tackled bodily in what was supposed to be a flying hug. With an exasperated sigh, Roxas found himself patting the boy's head before saying, "Hi, Sora. How much have you had to drink?"

Blue eyes that so resembled his own shot Roxas a hurt look. "I 'unno what you're talking 'bout, Roxy! I've only had uh…one drink!"

"You're full of shit, Sora, or you wouldn't be slurring your words so bad," Roxas glared at his cousin.

"But I _promise_, Roxy! And I never lie!"

Rolling his eyes, Roxas ceded for the time being. Fact was, Sora was right; he never in his young life had told a lie, which could only mean one thing.

Before the brunette could have a chance to react, Roxas swiped the red Solo cup from Sora's hand to examine the drink. Roxas' mental flag went up as soon as he saw the pink contents of the cup, but just to be sure he took the smallest sip before feeling his face turn green.

"Son of a bitch, Sora! How many fucking times do I have to tell you not to drink the fucking jungle juice?" Roxas growled.

"But s'not jungle juice, Roxy!" Sora all but whined. "It's the pink drink they made in the bath tub!"

If Roxas thought his face had been green before, he was certainly a shade rivaling something like pea soup about now. "Holy shit, they made the jungle juice in a BATHTUB? That's a whole new level of stupid and disgusting for Seifer and his gang!"

Furious, Roxas took his cousin's drink and marched outside to find Seifer with every intent of throwing the nasty drink in the bastard's smug face. He knew Sora was an adult and he couldn't stop him from drinking what he wanted, but for Christ's sake, a fucking bath tub? Roxas felt his stomach heave at the thought of all the sanitation issues associated with that. He wasn't a germophobe, but ugh.

Sure enough, Roxas found Seifer outside in the backyard surrounded by a group of high school girls that couldn't be older than fifteen, hanging on to the older boy's every word as he bullshitted his way through some story or another. Fuu and Rai were ever faithfully standing by his side, Fuu adding her infamous one-liners with Rai randomly shouting "Yeah! Ya know?"

Without any regard for the underage sluts that stood before his sworn enemy, Roxas marched right up to Seifer before shoving the drink under his nose. "A fucking bathtub, Seifer? Why can't you be a normal person and mix your jungle juice in a cooler?"

The taller boy narrowed his eyes dangerously at Roxas. "What's it to you, loser? Bathtub is bigger so I could make more of it. Kinda self explanatory, don't you think?"

Furious, Roxas pulled the drink back to throw it in Seifer's stupid face when out of nowhere an arm was thrown around his shoulders, rendering him fairly immobile.

Convinced it was Hayner, Roxas turned to tell him off but was instead greeted by the greenest eyes he had ever seen, framed by a shock of flaming red hair and…were those tattoos? On the guy's face?

"Hey baby, I've been looking all over for you! Some party, huh?" the guy flashed Roxas the most amazing grin in the history of mankind.

Speechless and utterly confused all at once, all Roxas was able to manage was a barely intelligible "Huh?" before he was firmly being steered away from the rather pissed off host, who quite frankly looked every bit as confused as Roxas felt beneath his angry mask.

Once they were a safe distance away from Seifer and his flunkies, the new guy let go of Roxas and turned to face him. "Hey, I don't know what that was about, but getting into a fight with a guy who has backup while you're alone is generally a bad idea, kid. You're lucky I saved your cute little ass just now."

Roxas knew deep down he should be grateful, but the only thing that popped out of his mouth before he even knew what he was saying was, "Uhh, who are you?"

At this, the redheaded stranger threw back his head and let loose a string of loud guffaws. Confused, Roxas could only manage to glare at the newcomer before he was looking at an extended hand, that amazing grin once again plastered on the new guy's face. "Sorry kid, forgot to introduce myself. Name's Axel, got it memorized?"

A delicate blonde eyebrow arched at this before Roxas grasped the offered hand and responded. "Roxas. You seem kinda weird but I guess I owe you for back there. "

Still grinning Axel jerked his head back towards the kitchen, "You look like you haven't had enough to drink. Wanna go get shitfaced?"

Finally cracking a lopsided grin of his own, Roxas nodded and fell in step beside the new stranger. "Best fucking idea I've heard all day."

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><p>It didn't take long for the petite blonde to get completely and utterly wasted on Seifer's generous selection of alcohol. He may be a total douche, but Seifer would never let his guests walk away from a party sober. Roxas quickly found a bottle of his favorite Bacardi Dragonberry and nursed the thing like it was a baby bottle for the better part of the night. Needless to say his vision was swimming within the hour.<p>

"Roxasss my man!" Axel's voice was just a tad louder than necessary in the blonde's currently hypersensitive hearing.

Grinning like an idiot, Roxas put his arm around the taller man's waist, allowing himself to be dragged into the next room. There were a few tables set up for beer pong, and Sora was already playing with his boyfriend Riku. Laughing, Axel indicated to the other end of their table as a defeated Kairi and Selphie walked away to let the next pair go.

After a couple of rounds, things began to get extremely fuzzy for Roxas. Soon enough, he and Axel found themselves sprawled out on a couch in a room void of anyone else, minus a random couple that was too busy making out in the corner to notice anything else. The pong tournament long forgotten, Roxas, who was now perched on Axel's lap, kept giggling uncontrollably. For his part, the redhead just kept grinning his lopsided grin, eventually wrapping an arm around the blonde's middle in hopes of helping calm him down.

"Did I ever tell you you look almost exactly like my ex?" Roxas suddenly blurted out before falling into another fit of giggles.

"No, you didn't. Way to make a guy feel special, Roxy." Axel ruffled Roxas' hair.

"Sorry. I mean, you look a lot like him. Like, you guys could be brothers. But you're way nicer than him. He's a real dick." At this, Roxas began to pout almost like a small child.

It took everything in Axel not to jump the poor kid right then and there. Instead, he settled for leaning in to give him a tender kiss.

Unfortunately, that's precisely when someone began screaming, "Cops!" as the red and blue lights began to flash through the front window, and all hell broke loose.


End file.
